Security

With Foothold Technology, your data will be protected by the highest level of security available anywhere. In fact, this level of security is so expensive that, without us, very few nonprofits could afford the kind of cutting edge protection we provide.

At Your Agency

Foothold Technology employs a highly sophisticated series of usernames and passwords to protect data from unauthorized viewing and manipulation within your agency. Because agencies are comprised of people with different responsibilities and roles, AWARDS ensures that staff members do not have access to information they don't need to or shouldn’t see.
This is one of the many features of our software that we will customize to fit your specific organizational structure and business rules.

The Road to Foothold’s Data Center

Many agencies are justifiably concerned by the prospect of sending highly confidential data across the internet. Recent technology, however, eliminates these concerns. Your data will undergo the latest 256-bit encryption process that renders it completely unintelligible to outsiders and intruders. (This is the same online security used by banks.) Information sent from your offices to our offices cannot be unscrambled. Additionally, because no data is ever stored at your office, there is no danger of outsiders breaking into your network or loss of data due to fire or other disastrous situations.

At Foothold’s Data Center

Foothold uses two world-class data centers, in two different states, to host our clients’ data. These data centers feature uninterruptible power supplies and highly sophisticated disaster prevention and recovery systems. Biometric confirmation of identity is required to enter our data centers. The data centers feature porous floors to prevent flood damage, “dry” sprinkler pipes, fire suppression gas instead of water, a diesel generator that picks up immediately in the advent of a power failure (during the Great Blackout of 2003, our customers who still had power were able to use AWARDS with no interruption in service), industrial air filtering and air conditioning technologies, and a live 24-hour armed guard.

Our main data center is run by Verizon, while our backup data center is maintained by Datapipe. In our data centers, we use servers with multiple hard drives in RAID arrays, with multiple CPUs, SANs and redundant power supplies, so that if any internal components malfunction, there is immediate failover -- with minimal interruption in service. Our servers also make use of firewalls in both hardware and software form. We also copy all data to a second server so that if an entire server malfunctions, there is another one ready, again with no service interruption. Lastly, a copy of your data is electronically transferred offsite once a week for safekeeping. No data security and storage procedure is 100% failure proof, but with Foothold, you are able to make use of a continually upgraded, state-of-the-art security program that is well beyond the means of nonprofit agencies acting alone.

As another layer of security, we have contracted with a third party to provide escrow services, whereby a copy of the entire AWARDS application and your data are put into a vault every quarter. This service guarantees you will have a copy of both your data and our software in case an unforeseen event closes our company. Escrow services are an additional charge.